KEY POINTS

When women express lower ambition or less confidence, it may be behaviors they have learned to work around systemic barriers.
Unraveling who we truly are as individuals—separate from the lifetime of gender-norming messages—is a complex, highly personal endeavor.
In predominantly male organizations, women's lived experiences are less often discussed or recognized.

In a previous post, Why Women Leave Leadership and What to Do About It, I described how women receive a lifetime of consistent, subtle, “gender-norming” messages that shape their beliefs and behaviors about their capabilities. If you are a woman with additional intersecting marginalized identities (e.g., BIPOC, disability, older, LGBTQ+), you receive multiple messages suggesting you are not good enough or not able enough. Some of those messages are subtle, and some are overt.

Over time, with enough of these messages, women start believing these messages are an accurate portrayal of their abilities, which can become a self-fulfilling prophesy: We might play small, speak less, and lower our expectations and aspirations.

To supervisors and those in a position to hire and promote women, it may (inaccurately) appear that these women have lower confidence, imposter syndrome, poor negotiation, and low ambition.

However, there is a difference between having an actual deficit and expressing a symptom or behavior.

There is a difference between actual deficits and expressed symptoms or behaviors.

Our behavior is an expression of many things, including the following:

What we are told and trained to believe as being “acceptable” by society;
How much we want to be accepted by society for acting out the behaviors that are considered “acceptable”; and
What we believe will lead to something we need. For example, we might believe: “If I act like I have low confidence, I won’t be perceived or treated as threatening, and therefore they might invite me to that meeting I feel I should be at without me having to demand it.”

These expressions of behavior may or may not reflect our true abilities. So, when women express lower ambition, demonstrate less confidence, and give up trying to negotiate, it may not be related to their ability as much as behaviors they have learned to work around systemic barriers.

The problem is that when women practice these navigational skills, it’s a temporary fix: It works until it doesn’t.

The very behaviors women practice to work around the systemic barriers become the new barriers that are used against them as reasons for not being promoted due to “lack of confidence, executive presence, negotiation skills….”

AAK! Have I turned your brain into a complete pretzel yet?

Unraveling who we truly are as individuals—separate from the lifetime of gender-norming messages—is a complex, highly personal endeavor.

And when leadership development and gender equity programs are developed without this context, they mistakenly (and harmfully) focus on fixing the symptoms (the behaviors) instead of the root cause.

Given what we now know about the minimal progress made by most organizations, after years of intensive efforts to address leadership gender disparities, it’s time to rethink the design of these programs.

Organizations interested in redesigning their programs will need to challenge what leadership really is, who can embody it, who has and doesn’t have the right skills, and what that path could look like for people who do not often have the luxury of taking a traditional leadership pathway.

Where can an organization start?

Embed lived experiences. Women (gender) and females (sex) experience specific challenges at the intersection of life phases, leadership phases, and sex and gender that differ from men and males. For example:

Those who have a primary responsibility to care for a dependent family member at home (children, family members with disabilities, single mothers, aging parents)—some men also have similar needs and face similar situations; however, we also know that more women than men take on these responsibilities, which have increased since the pandemic
Medical conditions (e.g., fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis [MS], migraines, endometriosis, menopause, breast cancer, hysterectomies) that have a higher prevalence among women
Difficult pregnancies
Desire/commitment to pumping breast milk
Undergoing fertility treatments
Hidden disabilities that are either more common or underdiagnosed among women (e.g., attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder [ADHD], autism, posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD], depression)
Managing intersectional identities that are impacted and compounded (e.g., racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia)

In male-dominated organizations, these lived experiences are less often discussed or recognized. And, yet, they affect so much of the employee journey and experience: career pathing, flexible work arrangements, benefits, professional and leadership development, retention, etc.

In organizations where there isn’t a critical mass of women in leadership, the message women receive is that “being a leader means not talking about or acknowledging being a woman or female.”

How can organizations embed this into existing programs?

Normalize these experiences. For example, create opportunities and safe spaces within existing programs, such as wellness programs and employee resource groups, to discuss how personal circumstances might affect employees' experience or decision-making. This would also include setting parameters, policies, and specific ground rules about not expecting anyone to share their private health information and also not sharing anyone else’s health information.
Enhance current leadership development programs. Ensure leadership development programs include methods for how to align with organizational vision and priorities while also developing an authentic leadership identity. When including specific assessments and coaching about developing one’s authentic leadership style, ensure that both assessments and coaching frameworks have been developed from a diversity, inclusion, and equity lens.
Train supervisors, mentors, sponsors, and allies (regardless of gender) to become comfortable understanding and engaging in those conversations. These are the people who will have the most impact on women’s professional outcomes. So they need to learn about the biases and assumptions inherent in seemingly innocuous efforts to help women succeed professionally; how to catch and challenge biases to avoid perpetuating the problem; and how to have meaningful “coaching conversations” to be genuinely supportive and make an impact.

In 2023, I’ll be interviewing human resources specialists; CEOs; supervisors; women leaders; diversity, equity, and inclusion experts; and allies to provide a 360-degree view of real lived experiences, how women are navigating, what is currently being done, and where gaps remain. Throughout, I will share an emerging framework for addressing these issues comprehensively.

Mira Brancu is co-author of the Millennials’ Guide to Workplace Politics, which includes tips like those above and more.